~ Standing up for Public Education

Monthly Archives: April 2016

“We are in danger of losing our locally elected voice. TheAmerican Legislative Exchange Council(ALEC) pushes model templates for many of the laws pushed by legislators. Among the worst are “preemption laws” in which legislatures pass overarching bans to prevent local municipalities from passing certain laws. This session the Fracking fight was nasty. The bill contained language banning local municipalities from passing laws against fracking knowing that many had already passed their own bans on the practice. Get the picture? ALEC and state politicians want “local control” to stop at the state house. If that happens, we all lose.”

This warning by Fund Education Now co-founder Kathleen Oropeza appeared inThe Orlando Sentinel|Central Florida 100, April 10, 2016. It’s important to note that privatizing services such as publiceducation relies on diminishing the power of local authorities as witnessed by theCharter War on School Boardslegislation pushed during the 2016 Florida Legislature. That’s why public education advocates must pay attention to preemption laws. Imagine what could happen if campus open carry gun laws passed at the state level could preempt a local ordinance?

The ALEC Fracking bill, sponsored byRep. Ray Rodriques for the fourth year in a row, died in the Senate. If it had passed, the bill would have overridden local laws in 32 counties and 48 Florida cities banning the practice. Our state is not alone; ALEC has helped “preemption” gain traction inmultiple states. InFlorida lawmakers use preemption laws to stomp out urban initiatives, Miami Herald columnist Fred Grimm expands on this ALEC model legislation and the multiple ways it’s being used in Florida to preempt local authority and undermine the authority of duly elected officials:

Florida mayors would recognize the scenario that led to so much turmoil in North Carolina: A city government passed a progressive ordinance that offended conservative sensibilities out in the hinterlands. The state legislature reacts. And to hell with local autonomy.

After Charlotte, the state’s largest city, passed an anti-discrimination ordinance that, among other things, allowed transgender people to use public bathrooms according to their gender identity, North Carolina’s Republican majority called aspecial sessionof the legislature. As if the state was in the throes of a real emergency.

The legislators went into full-scale preemption mode. Not only did they bar anyone in North Carolina from using public bathrooms not designated for their birth gender, but cities were flat out prohibited from adopting their own discrimination policies.

Just for good measure, the legislature tossed in an amendment that prohibits local governments from raising the minimum wage above the state level.

Preemptionhad struck again. It has become afavorite toolof conservative state legislatures bent on stifling urban sensibilities — especially in Florida, where right-wing lawmakers regularly pass laws to undo South Florida’s local government initiatives.

Just last month, they passed abillthat prohibits city and county governments frompassing new ordinancesthat regulate the Styrofoam containers that litter our beaches, parks and streets. (Styrofoam bans on the books before January were not affected.)

Over the years, the good ol’ boys in Tallahassee have passedpreemption lawsthat make sure that cities and counties can’t prohibit smoking in music venues, patio dining areas, parks and beaches. Local governments can’t demand that restaurants disclose the nutritional content of drinks and dishes. They can’t keep bio-medical waste out of city dumps.

In 2008, local governments were pre-empted from passing ordinances that prohibited or even taxed plastic bags until the state could come up with its own regulations on those environmental nuisances. We’re still waiting on the regs.

Local governments can no longer raise the minimum wage or tweak worker benefits (though Miami-Dade and Broward County living-wage laws weren’t affected.) Cities and counties can’t regulate beekeeping or prohibit homeowners from owning exotic animals, even jungle cats or cobras. Other than Miami-Dade County, which has a special home-rule exemption in the Florida Constitution, local governments can’t ban pit pulls.

The NRA has shoved a passel of the onerous preemption laws through our shoot-em-up Legislature. Local governmentscan’t prohibitconcealed weapons in parks or playgrounds or libraries or other public buildings. They can’t regulate the sale or possession of ammunition. They can’t mess with firing ranges. They can’t sue firearms companies. City and county elected officials risk a $5,000 and removal from office if they “knowingly and willfully violate” the preemption gun laws.

Florida’s many preemption laws wreak of hypocrisy, coming from right-wingers who constantly rail about federal interference in state prerogatives. From politicians who’d rather see their constituents suffer without health care than bend to a Washington mandate.

Besides, they know best. Just look how well preemption is working out for North Carolina.

Governor Scott signed the controversial Competency Based Education/Testing(CBE) Pilot into law allowing Pinellas, Lake, Palm Beach and Seminole counties to participate over a five- year period. Pinellas ($2.5 M) and Lake ($7.3M) have been moving toward CBE since 2014, thanks to funding from the Gates Foundation. CBE was heavily lobbied during Florida’s 2016 session by Jeb’s Foundations whose biggest donor is the Gates Foundation.

There are growing concerns about CBE used in conjunction with computers. As children move at their own pace, learning from the computer and taking adaptive tests, two things happen. The vendor who owns the program is collecting continuous detailed personal student data without parental consent and the human teacher steps to the background to provide technical assistance. Teachers no longer devise tests, computers do. This makes the entire CBE process high stakes, able to move students forward skipping an entire grade or bump them backward for poor performance.

The Gates Foundation uses a synthesis study by VanLehn to sell the notion that that there is no difference between one-on-one tutoring from a human teacher and an intelligent computer. This is digital education with the goal of achieving an “economy of scale” by eventually removing the very expensive element of human teachers.

Citrus County School Board Member Thomas Kennedy fully understands the threat posed by CBE/Testing to public education, as this excellent piece published in the Citrus Chronicle proves:

Behind the curtain – Competency Based Testing: More trickery from the wizards of public school education

Toward the end of the “Wizard of Oz,” while Dorothy and her friends are being addressed by the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz, the dog Toto runs off to the side, pulls back the curtain, and reveals a man operating cranks and levers. The Wizard orders them to “pay the man no attention” but has to give up when he realizes he has been seen for what he really is.

In a similar manner, the wizards of education — the same entities that gave you Common Core — are now trying to convince parents, teachers and communities that they want to reduce testing and do away with testing as we know it by replacing it with something called “Competency Based Testing” (CBT). CBTs are being “sold” to the public as a better way to assess our students and their teachers. However, the public has looked behind the curtain and realized on their journey down education’s yellow brick road they have been tricked and are about to be tricked again.

Formative assessments are used by teachers to help determine where their students are at in understanding a concept; teachers also use data from formative assessments to help them adjust curriculum, assignments and content so they can better meet students’ needs. Who benefits from formative assessments? Teachers and students. There is no grade promotion or punitive consequence associated with the results of formative assessments. Data is used so teachers teach what is necessary and students have an opportunity to spend time only on what they need to learn. Legislators have decided to seize this valuable tool, relabel formative assessments CBTs and use them as high-stakes tests that will determine students’ promotion and teachers’ evaluations. Legislators, along with curriculum publishers (aka textbook companies), and lobbyists are selling these CBTs as the fix to high-stakes testing. These people — the same people that promoted high-stakes tests in the first place — are telling us they have the solution. Really?

Many parent groups are already lining up to voice their concern about CBTs. United for Florida Children founder Laura McCrary recently wrote, “I am going to be blunt here. If parents don’t wake up and take a stand right now, this year, we will only have ourselves to blame. Ask yourself this. How do you see education in four to six years? I can promise you it won’t be the friendly teacher-driven classrooms we are seeing today. Changes are being made from the top down right now as you are reading this, and it isn’t pretty. It is called Competency Based Education (also known as Competency Based Learning, Outcome Based Education, Personalized Learning, and Performance Based Education to name a few).” Please read the rest of hercolumnwhich gives a great deal of background and information on CBTs.

So how fast is this issue developing? On Friday, March 25, 2016, Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed into law The Competency-Based Education Pilot Program. The bill creates a Competency-Based Education Pilot Program through HB 1365 and sets up a five-year pilot program in certain Florida counties with the goal of letting students advance through school if they can prove they’ve mastered what they should be learning. This means these CBTs are replacing the Florida Standards Assessment (Common Core assessment) that the legislators themselves passed into law. Will CBTs be testing Common Core standards? Yes, the pilot Florida CBTs will test Florida Standards, which are Common Core standards. Again, the legislators are trying to mislead the public. They want to give an illusion they have done away with testing. They haven’t; they have done something worse. They are taking an excellent classroom tool — formative assessment — bastardizing it, and calling it Competency Based Testing.

What the legislators should be doing when it comes to Florida public education and state-mandated testing is stopping the regulation and over-regulation of public education. If the Legislature truly wants to reduce the number of mandated test students take then they need to do just that. Right now the Legislature claims they have reduced the number of mandated tests. Really what they have done is reduced state-mandated tests in some cases, but then required that teachers’ evaluations are based on their students’ test scores. The Legislature can claim they haven’t mandated the test, but they in reality did mandate a test be used. The Florida Legislature has for a number of years asserted for private businesses to grow more jobs and for businesses to be more successful, more deregulation of mandated laws needs occur. Yet these same legislators take the very opposite approach when it comes to public education. It is a testament to our public schools they have succeeded over and over operating under the most stringent of laws.

Many of the most successful countries in the world in math and sciences have learned that for education to be successful teachers (not politicians) need to be at the center of learning and assessments. It is time that Florida’s next generation of Legislators take this same approach. We have seen behind the curtain and are not impressed.

Thomas Kennedy is a School Board Member for Citrus County School District. Read his blog, Thomas Talks . Read this article, originally published by the Citrus Chronicle on April 9, 2016 here.

Parents are making private choices about Florida Standards Assessments testing for their children. As Education Commissioner Pam Stewart issues “if you don’t like it leave” threats to families and districts, insanity is taking root. Example: The autistic son of Pinellas County parent, Elizabeth Shea, relies on his service dog at school. The dog and his handler, who happens to be Shea, were banned when the child attempted the FSA. The result was extreme anxiety. Sadly, Florida’s high-stakes testing obsession breeds bureaucrats eager to deprive a child of rights guaranteed to him by the Americans with Disabilities Act. That’s insane.